Increasing the effectiveness of food supply chain logistics through digital transformation

During the COVID-19 crisis, there were many restrictions to transportation. Due to that, a significant disruption in the food supply chain has emerged. The transportation of the fresh food and maintaining the quality, from farm to the table or distributing and then collecting from the warehouses and delivering to the consumer, has become crucial. Technologies and especially IoT, have become the primary tool to fight it. The research objective is to analyze and create new knowledge about digital technologies used to improve and make more effective the food supply chain processes. An exploratory case study methodology helps to investigate a large consortium based on IoT technologies, implemented in pilot cases on farm level and measuring their performance over the period of four years. This is an interpretative study, and the method of semi-structured interviews and document review for collecting the data was used. The results show IoT-connected sensors and systems in food and beverage supply chain logistics offer real-time visibility and data-driven analytics, allowing stakeholders to improve performance, cut operating costs, conduct predictive maintenance to avoid downtime, and even decrease energy usage or reduce negative environmental impacts.

Artificial Intelligence Applications in the New Model of Logistics Development Based on Wireless Communication Technology

With the continuous development of artificial intelligence technology, the supply chain logistics industry has shown new changes. The products of the intelligent era such as smart devices, big data computing, and Internet of Things technology have gradually become the transformation and innovation of logistics and supply chain enterprises. The important driving force of the logistics and supply chain industry will greatly improve the operational efficiency of the logistics and supply chain industry. Methods. This article studies the technical framework of artificial intelligence and explores the upgrading and transformation of supply chain logistics enterprises in logistics infrastructure, production tools, and logistics operation processes under the promotion of artificial intelligence technology, from warehouse location, inventory management, warehousing operations, transportation, and distribution. The data analysis and prediction analyze the impact of artificial intelligence on the supply chain logistics field and finally point out the problems in the intelligent development of the supply chain logistics field and put forward targeted suggestions to promote the modern supply chain logistics to become more intelligent. developThe new development trend of smart logistics is towards sharing economy, automation, service efficiency, and cost reduction. Results. In this context, if logistics companies want to achieve higher-quality development, they cannot do without business model innovation and larger-scale collaboration, transparency of logistics information, and more comprehensive information sharing. The new trend of the development of smart logistics is to develop in the direction of sharing economy, automation, service efficiency, and cost reduction. Conclusion. Intelligence and the Internet of Things are the inevitable trend of the development of smart logistics, which is mainly realized through the Internet of Things path in terms of visual information technology, intelligent robot operation, vehicle scheduling, and cargo traceability.

COVID-19 Testing and Diagnostics: A Review of Commercialized Technologies for Cost, Convenience and Quality of Tests

Population-scale and rapid testing for SARS-CoV-2 continues to be a priority for several parts of the world. We revisit the in vitro technology platforms for COVID-19 testing and diagnostics—molecular tests and rapid antigen tests, serology or antibody tests, and tests for the management of COVID-19 patients. Within each category of tests, we review the commercialized testing platforms, their analyzing systems, specimen collection protocols, testing methodologies, supply chain logistics, and related attributes. Our discussion is essentially focused on test products that have been granted emergency use authorization by the FDA to detect and diagnose COVID-19 infections. Different strategies for scaled-up and faster screening are covered here, such as pooled testing, screening programs, and surveillance testing. The near-term challenges lie in detecting subtle infectivity profiles, mapping the transmission dynamics of new variants, lowering the cost for testing, training a large healthcare workforce, and providing test kits for the masses. Through this review, we try to understand the feasibility of universal access to COVID-19 testing and diagnostics in the near future while being cognizant of the implicit tradeoffs during the development and distribution cycles of new testing platforms.

Firms’ Investment Behaviours in Temperature-Controlled Supply Chain Networks

Delivering high-quality food into markets is a vital expectation of modern customers. The significant increase in consumers’ awareness of food freshness, nutrition, and safety makes the temperature-controlled supply chain (TCSC) the focus of food logistics safety. However, a large number of Chinese companies are still reluctant to invest in the food supply chain, resulting in a high rate of supply chain logistics loss. This research aims to establish an economic model to explain why these companies do not invest and under what conditions they will do. The results show that high economic investment is the main reason that hinders companies’ willingness to build TCSC. Large companies with bigger production are more willing to invest in TCSC than small companies. Besides, larger companies running with high-quality products could get more profit while small companies operating with normal products are less competitive.

Mat Sinking Unit supply study : Mississippi River revetment

The Mississippi Valley Division (MVD) has maintained the Mississippi River banks for over 80 years. The Mat Sinking Unit (MSU), built in 1946, was considered state-of-the-art at the time. This system is still in operation today and has placed over 1,000 miles of Articulated Concrete Mats along the Mississippi River from Head of Passes, LA, to Cairo, IL. A new MSU has been designed and is expected to be fully mission capable and operational by the 2023 season, which is expected to increase the productivity from 2,000 squares/day up to 8,000 squares/day with double shifts and optimal conditions. This MSU supply study identifies and optimizes the supply chain logistics for increased production rates from the mat fields to the MSU. The production rates investigated for this effort are 2,000 squares/day, 4,000 squares/day, and 6,000 squares/day. RiskyProject® software, which utilizes a Monte Carlo method to determine a range of durations, manpower, and supplies based on logical sequencing is used for this study. The study identifies several potential supply and demand issues with the increased daily production rates. Distance to casting fields, number of barges, and square availability are the major issues to supply increased placement rates identified by this study.

Startups in the supply chain ecosystem: an organizing framework and research opportunities

PurposeStartups are associated with innovation, emerging technologies, digitalization and disruptive business models. This article aims to provide a better understanding of startups in logistics and supply chain management, organizes the contemporary discussion around startups in the supply chain ecosystem and outlines opportunities for future research.Design/methodology/approachThis study draws on the prior supply chain, logistics and entrepreneurship literature and discusses key themes along the six identified startup issues. Furthermore, it proposes several perspectives and theories for grounding future research.FindingsThis study discusses the roles and success factors of startups in the supply chain ecosystem. It lays out how startups need to organize their own supply chains, how supply chain management (SCM) startups incubate and accelerate their ventures, the financing of SCM startups, as well as their positions as service providers, suppliers and customers.Originality/valueThis research brings together the sparse and dispersed literature on startups in the supply chain ecosystem, motivating scholars to increase the involvement of startups as important stakeholders in SCM research.

Maritime Supply Chain Optimization by Using Fuzzy Goal Programming

Fuzzy goal programming has important applications in many areas of supply chain, logistics, transportation and shipping business. Business management has complications, and there exist many interactions between the factors of its components. The locomotive of world trade is maritime transport and approximately 90% of the products in the world are transported by sea. Optimization of maritime operations is a challenge in order to provide technical, operational and financial benefits. Fuzzy goal programming models attract interests of many scholars, therefore the objective of this paper is to investigate the problem of minimization of total cost and minimization of loss or damage of containers returned from destination port. There are various types of fuzzy goal programming problems based on models and solution methods. This paper employs fuzzy goal programming with triangular fuzzy numbers, membership functions, constraints, assumptions as well as the variables and parameters for optimizing the solution of the model problem. The proposed model presents the mathematical algorithm, and reveals the optimal solution according to satisfaction rank from 0 to 1. Providing a theoretical background, this study offers novel ideas to researchers, decision makers and authorities.